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- Title
The AKP's Appeal to the Kurdish Voters in Turkey: Exploring the Role of an Outsider Party Identity.
- Authors
Musil, Pelin Ayan
- Abstract
In the early 2000s, the Justice and Development Party (AKP) rose to power by contesting the electoral dominance of pro-Kurdish parties in the Kurdish-majority provinces of Turkey. The existing literature has accounted for the AKP's popularity in these provinces by focusing on three distinct factors: economic performance, the use of "Islam as cement," and pledges to safeguard the ethnic rights of the Kurds as a ruling party. This article introduces a more all-encompassing perspective for understanding the AKP's popularity among the Kurdish population. Based on original interviews conducted with party activists representing the AKP and the pro-Kurdish party, it argues that these three issues were encapsulated in the AKP's outsider identity, which was derived from its stance against an exclusivist state ideology. In making this argument, the article offers a two-dimensional definition of outsider parties, with one dimension based on their exclusion from the state ideology and the other based on the party's own discourse. The broader implication of this study is that outsider parties, as part of their power-seeking strategy, can mobilize groups with different political goals by creating a bonding effect among them against a repressive state ideology.
- Subjects
AK Parti (Political party : Turkey); VOTERS; KURDS
- Publication
Archiv orientální (ArOr), 2023, Vol 91, Issue 2, p205
- ISSN
0044-8699
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.47979/aror.j.91.2.205-228